


Taking In Strays

by Leahelisabeth (fortheloveofcamelot)



Series: Taking in Strays [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: After the King's Men, Family, Fluff, M/M, Neil and Andrew Adopt, coming home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 07:24:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10612053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheloveofcamelot/pseuds/Leahelisabeth
Summary: Neil picks up a stray.  He and Andrew get a little attached.





	

Neil had become a lot less vigilant over the years with Andrew watching his back so it took him an embarrassingly long time to realise he had a shadow. She was pretty good at staying in the shadows and being unobtrusive but Neil recognized her bike, locked to a lamppost at the far edge of their parking lot, one that doesn’t belong to any of his teammates. Once he knew she was there, he couldn’t stop seeing her out of the corner of his eye, lurking in the stands crouched low so no one would kick her out, and peering around the edge of the building when he came and went.

She was a little skittish so he knew he couldn’t just start talking to her. So he started sending Andrew home ahead of him with the car, saying he wanted to run home. 

Andrew, of course, pretended to believe him when he said he just wanted to get a little extra conditioning in. They had taken a break during the off-season and Neil had let go of his strict physical training regimen to allow himself to explore what it meant to be soft and secure with Andrew. “We don’t really need any more strays,” Andrew mocked. “Two cats are plenty.” His words lacked any real heat though.

So Neil watched as Andrew pulled out of the parking lot in their big, black monstrosity and he turned back to the sidewalk in front and started stretching out his toned legs in the summer sun. He closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth on his skin. He heard a little scuffle to the right as his shadow came a little closer.

“You can come and join me,” he said calmly without opening his eyes to look at her. He kept his eyes closed until he heard her sit down on the sidewalk beside him. She let out a long breath as she started to stretch too,

He turned to look at her once he heard her get settled. She was small and fine-boned with dark skin and hair wreathing her head in a frizzy halo. Her jeans were torn and her knobby knees were sticking out and her faded hello kitty shirt was much too big and hanging off one shoulder. He still didn’t say anything, just smiled at her and waited for her to make the first move.

“Do those hurt?” she whispered. 

Neil figured she meant the scars on his face. “Not anymore,” he said carefully. “They did when I got them but it was almost six years ago now and they’re all healed.”

“Did you get them from the game?” She was looking at his cheeks but hadn’t quite worked herself up to eye contact.

“No,” Neil smiled. “I get lots of bruises but this wouldn’t happen during the game.”

“Oh good,” she smiled, meeting his eyes fleetingly.

“Have you ever played Exy?” Neil asked.

She nodded at him, her voice becoming a little more animated and her body language becoming a little less like a frightened rabbit. “We play sometimes in school. We aren’t allowed to hit each other the same way though. The teachers give us time outs. I’m really good. I run fast. The coach wants me to join the middle school team but Greg won’t let me.”

“Who’s Greg?” Neil asked but immediately regretted it when she closed in on herself again.

“Mom’s boyfriend. He thinks I should be a lady. I ain’t no lady,” she mumbled.

Neil sensed there was more going on but could sense the kindred runaway in her and didn’t want to push her away.

“I’m Neil,” he said, cautiously reaching his hand out to shake.

“I know.” She solemnly shook his hand. “You were number 10 on the Palmetto Foxes. I tried to watch all your games. I want to be a striker just like you.”

“Like me?” Neil laughed. “Not like Kevin Day?”

“No way! Kevin is a really good player but I’ll never be tall like him. But I can be fast like you,” she said earnestly.

“Good point,” Neil grinned. “Andrew won’t expect me back home for a while yet. Want to find out what it feels like to practice on a real court?”

“Really?” She jumped up, her eyes wide with excitement.

“Sure. I can give you some tips. Teach you how to play like me. But you’ll have to tell me your name.”

“My name’s Angelica. You can call me Angel,” she shouted over her shoulder as she ran toward the court doors.

Neil ran her through some of the easier drills and was impressed. She didn’t have a lot in the way of precision but she was fast and agile and quickly showed improvement. They ran around for a good hour before Neil stood in front of the goal and let her take shots on him. They ended up lying on the floor in the middle of the court, looking up at the ceiling with Neil telling her some of his favourite stories from his time with the Foxes. 

Neil wasn’t even sure what time it was when a shadow came between him and the ceiling.

“Junkie,” Andrew snorted. “It’s supper time.”

Neil scrambled to his feet. “Hey, I was just going to run home. You didn’t have to come get me.”

Andrew just raised his eyebrow at that. “You know King won’t eat unless you’re there. And then you’ll be all annoyed if he dies of starvation all because you’re too addicted to this stupid sport to come home and feed yourself.”

Neil rolled his eyes. “Right. _King _doesn’t want to eat without me.” He dusted off the back of his pants and reached down to pull Angel to her feet. “Do you need a ride home? We can drop you off on the way.”__

She shook her head, looking wide-eyed at Andrew. 

Andrew’s scowl deepened. “This your latest stray? I suppose it’s too late to stop you from adopting this one?”

Neil smirked. “When have you ever been able to stop me? This is Angel. She wants to play Exy for the Tapirs.”

Andrew nodded slightly, looking her over coolly. “Are you coming?” he said to Neil after a moment of silence.

“Yeah,” Neil said. “It’s no trouble to drop you off, Angel.”

But Angel was shaking her head again and backing away. By the time they followed her to the door, she was already speeding away on her bike. 

“Reminds me of you,” Andrew commented as they pulled out of the parking lot and Neil knew that he approved. The rest of the ride was spent in silence until they pulled into their driveway at home. “Who the fuck named their Exy team the Tapirs?” Andrew said as he jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Neil let out a startled laugh and followed his boyfriend in for dinner.

* * *

Angel stopped by the court most days after practice. Depending on how tired he was, Neil would either run around with her, working on her aim or stand in goal and let her take shots on him. Sometimes, after a particularly brutal practice, he would sit cross-legged on the floor and correct her stance as she ran through the drills on her own. Andrew usually drove home and came back a few hours later with ridiculously transparent excuses for why Neil needed to come home immediately, but sometimes he sat up in the stands and watched. He never really said much, and never to Angel directly.

“Tell the kid not to shorten her steps when she’s shooting at the net. She’s losing a lot of momentum,” he commented after a week of practices. “Tell her to work on her follow through with the swing. She’s holding back,” he said a couple days later. Angel didn’t really know what to think of him. She got the same deer-in-headlights look every time he opened his mouth. And she would hunch her shoulders and let her wild curls fall into her face so she looked smaller than Andrew, even though she already had a good inch on him.

They didn’t only practice. They talked a lot too. It was really hard to get anything personal out of her. She wasn’t quite as closed off as he had been before the Foxes but she protected herself nearly as zealously. Neil often found himself sharing more than he thought he could in an effort to draw her out. He didn’t say anything concrete about his father or his scars but she knew that he had been abused and that he had been on the run for most of his life. She would talk to him about school and her best friend and her Exy team, but her family was alost entirely off limits. Sometimes she would tell him stories that her mom had told her from when she was a kid. Neil knew that her mom’s boyfriend was not her dad and her real dad wasn’t in the picture anymore. And he knew that her mom had died of an overdose last year but her mom’s parents had refused to take her in so she was still staying with Greg. But if he tried to push more about her home life, she would clam up, and sometimes she would run.

About two weeks after they started practising together, on a day that Andrew had gone home, they were sitting on the ground catching their breath after a particularly gruelling drill when Angel looked out across the court, refusing to meet his eyes, and asked, “Andrew...he’s your...boyfriend?”

“Something like,” Neil replied. “I don’t really like that term. Partner is better. But yeah.”

“He doesn’t seem very nice,” she finally looked him in the eye, her brow furrowed.

Neil laughed. “No, I suppose he doesn’t. And I guess that’s not really how I would describe him. He’s...right, I guess. We just...fit somehow.”

“How long have you been dating?” she asked.

“Well, it’s kind of hard to pick an anniversary date, but I guess we’re somewhere around six or six and a half years,” Neil said thoughtfully.

“Hmm,” she looked away from him again and Neil knew this conversation was over.

* * *

A month and a half after the extra practices started, Neil was in goal. They had been working with her swing all day and they were both tired but Angel was determined to get it right. Andrew was sitting up in the stands and occasionally yelling down suggestions. Angel was making her 300th approach on net, trying a close up feint, and her toe caught on the floor and she tripped and tumbled into Neil, headbutting him in the breadbox. Neil collapsed like his strings had been cut and gasped for breath on the floor. Andrew was at his side before he managed to get his breath back and was manhandling him with the rough gentleness that looked like barely controlled violence to the uninitiated.

And then suddenly Angel was between them, pushing Andrew back with all her strength. Andrew, surprised, let her do it. “Don’t touch him,” she snarled.

“Angel,” Neil croaked. “It’s ok. I’m…”

“Shut up,” Andrew interrupted. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Don’t talk to him that way,” Angel yelled.

“Angel…” Neil tried again.

“I’m not going to let him hurt you anymore,” she glared.

And both Neil and Andrew fell completely silent. Neil finally could breathe easily and he stood up and stood right beside her and Andrew where they were having their staredown. 

“You think I would hurt him?” Andrew asked. His face hardly changed but at the same time, Neil felt he had never seen Andrew look so sad.

Angel faltered. “But...the scars. Neil said he got them when you started dating. And you call him names and tell him that you hate him and it’s just like…” And then she abruptly shut her mouth.

“Just like what?” Neil asked gently, his eyes on Andrew as they both guessed what she was about to say.

“Just like Greg,” she admitted.

Andrew finally spoke again, his voice wrecked. “What does Greg do to you?”

Angel hid her face against Neil’s shoulder. “I can’t tell you. He said I couldn’t tell anyone.”

“Angel,” Neil whispered. “Look at me.” He waited until she finally pulled herself away enough to look him in the eye. “Andrew didn’t give me these scars. Andrew protected me. He helped me to stop running. He gave me the first real home I have ever known. If he wasn’t in my life. I would probably be dead now. He has always protected me and he can protect you too. You just have to tell us the truth.”

Angel was silent for a while but whatever she was looking for in Neil and Andrew’s faces, she obviously found it because she began to speak. “He just wants me to be a proper lady, not a whore like my mother.”

Neil winced.

“He thinks I need to learn how to be a good woman and cook and clean the house and stuff because he doesn’t have a wife to do it for him. But I’m really stupid and sometimes I do things wrong and then he has to whup me. And if I don’t let him do it, he says he’ll kick me out and I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Andrew reaches up and grabs the back of Neil’s neck. Neil hadn’t even realized how much he needed Andrew’s solid hands to ground him until they brought him back down to earth again.

“Does he?...” Andrew rasped. “Does he ever touch you?”

“”No,” Angel said. “Once he kissed me when he was drunk but I’m fast and he gets really clumsy when he starts talking that way.”

Neil let out the breath he was holding and he felt Andrew’s hand on his neck become a little less tense.

“Okay,” Andrew said. “Let’s go.” Neil immediately started following but Angel held back until Neil grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him to the car. They stopped at a bank first and Andrew went in alone. He came out with a thick envelope that he stuffed in his jacket pocket. 

“Directions,” Andrew snapped.

Angel just stared at him.

“Can you tell us where you live?” Neil asked gently.

In a shaking voice, she told Andrew how to get to her house. When they got there, the door wasn’t locked but Andrew kicked it in anyway. “Go get your stuff,” he commanded.

Greg leapt up off the couch. He had greasy red hair and a straggly beard and his plaid shirt was half unbuttoned over his beer belly. He had nearly a foot and a half and a good hundred pounds on Andrew but Andrew faced him down, somehow towering over the man. 

Neil didn’t stay to watch the confrontation. He pulled Angel up the stairs to her room to pack up her things. There wasn’t much to gather. She had even fewer clothes than Neil had carried in his old duffel bag. She had a few worn books and a school bag with a broken binder and three pens. She crawled quickly under her bed, pulled back a chunk of baseboard to reveal a necklace with a diamond pendant. 

“It was my mom’s,” Angel said. “Her parents gave it to her when she finished university and I didn’t want Greg to sell it for beer money.”

“I’m glad you have something of hers,” Neil said softly.

They came back down the stairs. They would never know just what Andrew had said to Greg, but the pale and trembling man sitting on the floor, surrounded with the acrid stench of urine, and sporting a brand new wet stain on his filthy jeans, suggested it had been effective.

Andrew dropped the thick envelope in the yellow puddle on the floor. “This is all you’ll ever get from us. If you try to see her again, I will take it back out of your hide.”

And they left. It felt like only a few minutes before they were pulling into the underground parking garage and taking the elevator up to Andrew and Neil’s cozy apartment.

Neil took her duffel bag into the spare bedroom that Nicky had insisted they furnish for when he wanted to visit. And then he introduced her to the cats. She was on the floor in seconds, playing with one of the feathered cat toys that Andrew insisted had just appeared in the house one day.

Neil left her to it, heading into the kitchen area and starting supper, but still able to see her there in the living area.

Andrew stood against the wall. He hadn’t spoken a word since they left Angel’s former home. Neil stopped chopping and just watched him as he watched Angel. Most people would mistake the look on Andrew’s face for boredom, but Neil knew better.

Andrew huffed and pushed himself away from the wall. He lowered himself gracefully to the floor across from Angel. King Fluffkins immediately launched himself into Andrew’s lap and curled up there, still reaching out the occasional paw to bat at the toy if it got too close. Andrew gently scratched the cat’s ears for a while before reaching into his pocket. 

“I’ll get myself a new one cut in the morning,” he said, holding out his hand. There, sitting in his palm, glinting gently in the light, was a key.


End file.
